


The Hollow Man

by Gotcocomilk



Category: Bleach, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Wei Wuxian, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Family Bonding, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Hollow! WWX, LWJ is a Kuchiki change my mind, M/M, Minor Character Death, RIP Aizen tbh, is three mad hollows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23500609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gotcocomilk/pseuds/Gotcocomilk
Summary: You are what you eat, it was said, and Wei Wuxian had devoured far too many dead to be human.Or: WWX has been dead for a long time, and had a hole in his chest for longer.
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn & Coyote Starrk
Comments: 92
Kudos: 808





	The Hollow Man

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry to inform all of you that I've fallen into Bleach hell, and this is the first of many things that are Bleach related, RIP all of us. Enjoy!

You are what you eat, it was said, and Wei Wuxian had never been picky. He’d eaten so much, in the short years of his life— the food of Yunmeng, warm and comforting as Shijie’s arms. The wines of Gusu, fine and bright with laughter on his tongue. The peppers of Qishan, hotter than the sun Wen Chao claimed to stand for.

Wei Wuxian had eaten so much in his life, but nothing was quite so sour as the dust of Yiling.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

In the first month after Wei Wuxian’s disappearance, the Burial Mounds screamed.

A fury like ten thousand demons ripped into stone and bone, dancing from ear to spine with a shiver. No one who heard the screams could escape the fear, but few heard the screams at all; the Burial Mounds were vast, and the people of Yiling were no fools. They did not walk shaking feet across corpse-ground, and that was for the best.

There should be no one to hear Wei Wuxian’s screams, not when they were so very sweet. Not when they didn’t last for long, either.

Hunger was a quick killer, but thirst was faster still. It struck deep in Wei Wuxian’s dry throat, sucked the life from him over corpse dust and ash and bleached bones.

The thirst was almost as strong as the love.

The second month, there were no screams to echo over stone walls. There was no fear sparking across the graves of a thousand souls, and no sound but the snarls of a rabid beasts. That melody sounded like the moments before a fight, like the spilled blood between two things that hungered.

It sounded like the roar of a monster, and Wei Wuxian’s voice was the highest note. It was the loudest note too, and it hungered for more than souls.

It was strong.

The third month, the roars turned to rage. It turned bones to dust to, and souls to food. Had there been anyone to step near, they would have felt fear devour their marrow like a plague come to rot them through. But there was no one in Yiling who walked near, and no one to hear Wei Wuxian’s rage.

Then the rage turned to fear, and then to silence.

In the third month, a still calm came to settle across the Burial Mounds. In the third month, there was no sound, not the rustle of wind or the creaking of bone.

In the third month, it was quiet. 

In the fourth month, a flute could be heard, trailing over bone-flecked walls and across cracked stone. It shook further than the screams had ever reached, and even the tea cups of Yiling shook before it.

It was a sound that haunted the air after every laugh, until there were no laughs left to haunt.

In the fourth month, a mask cracked. It splintered into shards under Wei Wuxian’s fingers, broken by a love deeper than hunger. There was a family waiting for him, outside of these corpse-walls. There was a war he needed to fight, and revenge he needed to take. He could not linger here, a monster in a white mask. He would walk the world instead, a monster with a bright smile.

He did this for them.

You are what you eat, it was said, and Wei Wuxian had devoured far too many dead to be human.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The Nightless City would fall to his hunger. Wen Chao’s soul tasted like ash on his tongue, but Wei Wuxian devoured it anyway, felt screams linger in his belly long after their sound had faded. He treasured those screams, as he treasured the finest wine and the laughter that bubbled up his throat.

It wasn’t enough to sate his hunger, but for Shijie and Jiang Cheng, it would have to be. The souls of the Wen would be enough to feed him, even if Wei Wuxian’s hunger drove him on and on, made him crave.

Wei Wuxian knew he had become a monster, for all that he did not know what kind. There was a guess lingering under his skin, borne of mad genius and long study.

_Energy is just energy_ , he had once said. He had been right, and yet wrong. He wondered if the boy that had laughed in the Clouds Recesses knew what lingered in the empty places where a core had been.

He wondered what Lan Zhan saw, when the man looked at Wei Wuxian’s smile.

Lan Zhan, perfect and beautiful Lan Zhan, unstained and clean Lan Zhan, didn’t understand. But he saw more than the others, and tried to piece together the cracks of Wei Wuxian’s mind.

If only the man knew Wei Wuxian had already patched them by eating a thousand souls. If only the man knew that he had become a monster. Wei Wuxian didn’t know what would happen, if he walked the quiet mountain paths back to Gusu, but he knew it wouldn’t end well.

There was no space for a monster in the Cloud Recesses, and he hungered too much to be contained. He wouldn’t stain Lan Zhan’s white robes with bone-dust, not when there were Wen to defeat and battles to win.

“Oh, Lan Zhan. If only you could see me now,” he said to the corpses of a thousand soldiers, and felt the hole in his chest catch a breeze through his robes. It was a small thing, cut out above his heart. The amulet pressed against it and caught the wind, a strange whistling echoing over the bodies before him.

The hole should have been gold, but now it was empty.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The war ended too quickly, but the Stygian Tiger Amulet kept him full in the years after. It filled the hole in his chest carved by hunger, slotted in perfect and terrible.

Wei Wuxian was almost human, with the amulet digging into dead skin. He could laugh and smile and stand beside his family. He could love them, strong and desperate as a starving man reaching for food.

But he would not touch them, if he had to rip of his own hands.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

He had sworn he wouldn’t touch them. He had sworn he wouldn’t lose control of the monster he had become. For the first time in his life, Wei Wuxian had broken a promise made to Jiang Cheng.

It was the last one he ever made.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Wei Wuxian did not die, at the siege of the Burial Mounds. His body faded away, crushed and broken to shreds. His soul, it was thought, was scattered.

Jiang Cheng walked away from the edges of a precipice, feet slow and lightning crawling up his spine. The ground beneath his feet was slick with blood, but he did not slide.

He did nothing at all, as he walked slow feet to an empty home.

Lan Zhan didn’t stand there in that moment, and did not know the sigh of fresh blood. He only came days later, when the slick ground had dried and only ash remained.

He walked quick feet over the Burial Mounds, and found a child nestled in the quiet of a tree trunk. He played ten lonely melodies too, letting the sound echo across the empty corners of Yiling.

He played, love and desperation driving him on.

But Wei Wuxian’s soul did not answer the notes of Inquiry. It had been laughing for too long to hear them, and stubborn for much longer.

Wei Wuxian did not die, at the siege, because it was hard to kill what was already dead.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The hollow was small, but Starrk knew that meant nothing of power. It was unassuming too, tall for a human but not tall for the creatures that walked on these sands. Red eyes glinted over shifting dunes, bright and brutal as the spill of blood. They were inhuman eyes, the look of a monster who tasted the void with every breath. Starrk recognized that look, and felt it linger in the back of his mind.

It was hungry, but the hollow’s smile was human. The hollow's smile was human, because it had no mask. No bone glinted over the soul’s skin, and no snapping jaws lingered in the moonlight. A necklace of bones stuck to the shape of starved chest, a warm white as if the sun had bleached it.

It was strange. There was no sun in this place, and nothing but sand as far as could be seen. There was nothing to stain bones like that.

Starrk hadn’t ever seen a creature quite like this before, but it didn’t matter. This hollow would die under his reiatsu as all the others did. Everyone died.

“You’ll die if you stay next to me,” he said again, words rough and tired. Starrk had lived a long time, and wandered the sands with nothing but death to keep him company.

He was so very tired.

But the hollow only laughed, bright and dancing. The sands seemed to hold that echo for a heartbeat too long, if they still had heartbeats to count by. If Starrk cared to count anything at all.

“Death’s never been very good at keeping me down.”

It was a sound Starrk hadn’t heard in decades. He had forgotten how good laughter could sound. He had forgotten what sound was like at all, beyond the shifting grains of sand and the howl of the wind.

Starrk had forgotten a lot, but he hadn’t forgotten that this man would die.

“You have to leave. It’s impossible to survive.”

_It’s impossible to survive me_ , lingered on his tongue, but he didn’t say it. He thought the man would understand anyway. The smart ones left before they resolved under the pressure.

He had thought that, but the man only fell down beside him with a sigh like smoke and ash.

“You know, I’ve always been good at achieving the impossible,” the hollow said, smile bright and red eyes sliding shut. Starrk, after a long and cold moment, looked away.

His warning fell on stupid ears, apparently. 

They didn’t move for a long time, laying in the sands and staring up at the cracks of the world. Starrk waited, over long breaths and longer silences, for the hollow to die.

He didn’t.

After uncountable hours under a moon that never shifted, Starrk gave up waiting. After longer still, he gave up pretending to sleep.

He sat up, and the man was still there.

“See? I'm not dead! Nice try! Better luck next time!”

The man was smiling, the edges of his soul whole and steady. He hadn’t shaken even a little, beneath the corrosive hunger of Starrk’s reiatsu. There was a vortex of power swirling around them, a mountain come to destroy and crush every friend he had ever had.

But the man was fine. The man could survive next to him, for longer than anyone else.

Starrk wasn’t alone.

The man raised a hand, lazy and sharp. Starrk could see the bones of a starved wrist showing clearly through thin skin, and wondered how well the man knew hunger.

He wondered if the hollow had eaten as many lives as he had.

“Hey, can you carry me across the sands? I’m tired of walking, and since you haven’t killed me I think you own me a favor.”

Starrk fell down again, the sand shifting under his weight. Finally, he had met his match in laziness.

“Why don’t we just sleep here.”

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

He didn’t ask how the kid had survived. He waited to be told instead, content to sleep on shifting sands and watch the moon shine. He was content to not be alone. Starrk didn’t care how it had happened.

But the man— he’d never given a name, and Starrk _had_ asked that— told him anyway.

“You have too much energy, but that’s fine. I died of hunger and thirst see, and it’s easy to absorb energy if you don’t have any to begin with,” the man said, and Starrk couldn’t help but stare at the hollow hole filling a starved chest.

It seemed to absorb the light, and the longer he stared the more he could watch his reiatsu spiral into the man’s skin and give it a human life.

No wonder the man could survive.

The hollow only laughed. It sounded darker this time, rough as the moments before death. Red eyes glinted above the sands like they could pry the shell off a hollow and eat it whole, if given the right incentive. If Starrk still had the energy to laugh, he imagined his would sound like that too. 

He thought that he might find the energy, after a few more naps.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Time slipped past quickly after that, gone to endless words and cheerful company. The man with the red eyes was bright and sharp, every words lighter than the last. Starrk lost himself to the quiet of sleep, to the warm ache that came with an end to loneliness.

For the first time in his life, he was not alone. But there was a dark edge to the man’s motions, and a hunger that laced every breath and every word.

Starrk had not forgotten the thin set of the kid’s wrists. He thought he didn’t understand as well as he should, for one hollow to another. It felt like even the sand beneath their feet could be devoured by the man’s hunger, and that surprised Starrk too.

He didn’t care.

“You know, if I’m gone you’d need some company. Someone who didn’t die would be better, though I suppose you could animate some corpses.”

Starrk only looked at the moon and sighed.

“Kid, that’s your hobby,” he said at last, taking lazy steps forwards and thinking of the hollow corpses the man laughed beside. He didn’t comment on the impossibility, on the iron grip his reiatsu took of anyone who drew near.

The man with the red eyes was his pack. That was all Starrk needed, when everyone else died.

“Everyone needs a hobby, Starrk! Mine’s more useful than most, don’t you think? But I bet you could make one.”

Starrk slowed, steps melting into stillness. Disbelief cut across his skin, but trust was stronger. The kid had done the impossible before; Starrk didn’t doubt he could do it again.

“Is that possible?”

He didn’t ask what would take the man away, but it didn’t matter— Starrk had found pack and family, and nothing would take that from him. Where the man with the red eyes went, he would follow and protect, whether he was wanted or not.

That’s what family did.

The hollow laughed, ruthless as the sliver of the moon above them. The hunger gleamed in red eyes, as the teeth of a bone mask clattered across a carefully woven necklace. He looked wild and dangerous as nothing else in Hueco Mundo.

Starrk felt warm enough to sleep.

“Do you doubt me?” The kid asked, as they stepped over the sands of their lonely home. Starrk paused, let the thoughts linger on his tongue.

“No, kid,” he replied at last, and closed his eyes against the shifting light.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

It was easy to break a mask, if you knew it was possible. It was easier with a man standing beside you and digging devourous fingers into your face to carve you open and help you live.

Lilynette was born under the cold light of a chill moon, with laughter ringing in the air behind them. She looked small, fierce as the moonlight above and twice as deadly.

She was loud from the beginning, even as she gave a name and filled part of the hole Starrk could feel trembling through his bones. The rest was filled by mad laughter, and a smile that could carve the world to pieces.

Starrk had never felt so warm, standing on the cold sands, but this was no surprise.

There was nothing colder than loneliness.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

When the stranger with the calculating eyes and cold smile came to Hueco Mundo, Starrk was sleeping.

This wasn’t unusual, really. He slept a lot, more now that he had two bodies to sleep beside. Starrk didn’t know when the stranger came, not when the moonlit sky never changed and time passed on like death. He couldn’t count the days if he wanted to, and he didn’t care too. They passed quickly now, warm and annoying as sand on his tongue.

They passed so quickly, he thought, listening to the delighted laughter of the kid and the outraged shrieks of Lilynette.

“How interesting,” said the stranger, eyes growing brighter with each moment. Starrk did not stand, and did not shift. The sands beneath him were comfortable, and the laughter had only grown sharper.

It would take him a heartbeat to stand, and that was enough to protect Lilynette. As for the kid, well.

Starrk understood enough of the man’s madness and strength to know he didn’t need protecting.

There were two others too, their reiatsu the leashed calm of something new. It was not a reiatsu Starrk had felt before, and did not have the corrosive edge of hunger that marked hollows.

He didn’t know what they were.

“I can’t feel spiritual pressure from any of you. Quite strange I think, for three Vasto Lordes. And you’re the strangest of all, aren’t you?”

The stranger’s eyes were glittering at the kid, interest flashing like danger under a moon that never set. Starrk shifted across the sands, the low slouch of sleep fading from his shoulders. There were a thousand ceros fluttering under his skin, ready to fly across the sky and into a world that couldn’t stand before him. Lilynette growled too, furious and protective.

The kid may be strong enough to devour the world whole, but he was still pack. They would fight for their pack, always and forever.

But they didn’t need to. There was a laugh like thunder, echoing out over the sands and away, as the kid stood.

“I’ve always stood out, what can I say?”

“I can see that,” the stranger said, smirk growing brighter with every breath. It was still calm, and far too lazy. “Do you three want to come with me? I need soldiers, to fight this war.”

Starrk shifted, and felt the sands shifted beneath his body, cold with the moonlit gleam. All his life, Starrk had wished to be weak. He had wished for companions to end the solitude, wished that he did not destroy everyone who spoke to him.

The kid had given him that. The kid had given him Lilynette too, and the warmth that came with an end to loneliness.

He would do what the kid wanted.

“Can’t say I’ve ever liked taking orders,” came the response, laughing and bright under the sun. Red gleamed and glinted under the mood, a thousand shades of light swirling out of the kid’s stare.

They looked like they were laughing, those ribbons of light. Damn kid was so dramatic.

“Can’t say I’ve liked when its not a request but a command, either.”

“You won’t do,” the man with the bright eyes said, and smiled a little wider. That was all the threat Starrk needed to move.

Three strange men, no matter the strength, were no match for the kid’s hunger. They were no match for Starrk’s speed either, or the furious edge to Lilynette’s cero.

At the last, when the stranger with the bright eyes was drained of reiatsu and devoured under the kid’s starved fingers, Starrk looked up at the sky.

The moon seemed brighter, when he did not stand alone.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Aizen Sousuke died quickly, on the dunes of Hueco Mundo. He died to a power that was uniquely suited to his doom, and he died without ceremony.

It was not what he had planned, and he did not see the teeth that devoured him. But few things could plan for Wei Wuxian, and fewer still could survive him.

Wei Wuxian knew that better than anyone, and had long ago paid the price.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

“He had an odd thing, you know. I wonder if I could use this.”

The words were idle, spoken over the gentle huffing breaths of Lilynette in sleep. They were quiet too, beneath a moon that seemed more like nightfall.

Starrk only rolled over, shifting so the sands held his body more closely. If he ignored the fact a thousand grains stuck to every piece of his skin, there was no more comfortable place to sleep.

Starrk wondered if there was a different sky to sleep under. He wondered if he could sleep somewhere warm, someday, and if light would press gentle fingers into his skin.

Then Lilynette fell across him, hair pressing against the smooth hierro of his stomach. He couldn’t feel it, not really. But he imagined that for a weaker hollow, it would have felt like comfort.

Maybe he didn’t need a warmer place.

The kid spread out beside him too, starved shoulders knocking into Starrk’s with a clatter of tough skin and dancing bones.

“Are you going to destroy it?” He asked, idle and uncaring. It had been too long since he’d last slept, and he wanted to stare at the moon and fall into sleep.

It didn’t matter, anyway. He’d follow the kid’s decision, no matter what it was. He felt Lilynette shift against him, and knew they both would.

“You wound me Starrk! I’d never waste something so interesting.”

Starrk snorted, quiet and uninterested. The kid might have a fine tuned control, but that didn’t mean he would destroy all of Hueco Mundo for sport. It didn’t mean he would stay, either.

For a moment, he forgot the sky and the light, the other places he wanted to sleep and the sun he remembered vague as a memory. For a moment, he didn’t wish to be weaker.

He was already somewhere warm.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The shop was a quiet place in the middle of the night. It was long past the time the children had fallen asleep, and long past the hour when any customers knocked on his doors.

It was long past the hour when Kisuke should be awake, but that was no surprise. He was so rarely asleep. It was rarer still now, when a war of his own making loomed on the horizon and the weapon he forged was in enemy hands.

It had been three months, and there was no sign of Aizen. There had been no word of Arrancar either, and no movement from the sands of Hueco Mundo.

It was too quiet, and Kisuke didn’t like it. Soul Society was growing restless, and the captains were readying to take the war to Aizen instead of planning a trap in Karakura.

It was far too quiet. Kisuke would have to find out why, and there was only one place to do that.

But he couldn’t go alone. The soul butterfly was on his finger in a heartbeat, and the message passed on before three breaths had passed.

He looked out at the quiet calm of his shop, and knew it was time to craft a new set of plans.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The white stone welcomed him, each step of his feet graceful as the swirl of sand in a garden. It held him close too, no sound echoing out from his motions. He walked silently, lightly, and did not hesitate.

It had been many years since the man in black robes had first stepped across this stone, but it still greeted him with the same reverence.

Dignity could not be denied, in life or the waking moments after.

“Kuchiki-san,” came the greeting at the door, a bow come to escort him into the compound. The guard was respectful, as the compound was respectful, as the city was respectful. He nodded, quiet as the new dawn.

Respect deserved respect.

The compound inside elegant walls was quieter still, made from the dignity of a noble house and the ease of a thousand years of silence. He had walked houses like this before, and knew their serenity in his bones.

He missed the sound of footsteps on the roof, and a smile like the sun. He missed the spill of fine liquor over the tiles, and the clash of swords under the moonlight. He missed the son he had raised, and the brother he had left behind to cultivate into immortality.

The man once called Lan Wangji mourned many things, but he mourned Wei Ying most of all.

But ever had he walked to where chaos was, and protected those who had no swords to raise. It was no different, bearing the noble name Kuchiki. It was no different when he was dead, and the power under his fingers came from reiatsu and not the golden core spinning in his chest.

It was no different, because his soul was no different.

The man once called Lan Wangji would not abandon the path of a protector, but he would not abandon the search either. He would never stop looking, not if it took him a hundred years and a thousand sleepless nights reading records.

Wei Ying’s soul walked somewhere in three worlds with dancing steps, laughing and beautiful as a storm.

The man once called Lan Wangji would find it in death, as he had not in life.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on [my discord server](https://discord.gg/7tn2ywb) for prompts and general tomfoolery, and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/gotcocomilk) for stupidity. 
> 
> I love hear if I wrote a particularly captivating or interesting line-- feel free to include it in a comment to feed your friendly neighborhood writing monster.


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